Biosynthesis of drosopterins, the red eye pigments of Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Drosophila melanogaster has red eyes. Scientists have been curious about the biosynthesis of the red eye pigments and have completed a number of investigations on these compounds. Scientific contributions made over the past 50 years have improved our understanding of the red eye pigments. Researchers have elucidated the chemical structures of some pigments and have successfully purified and identified the enzymes that participate in the biosynthesis of the red eye pigments. In this article, we will review the characteristics of the Drosophila red eye pigments and of the enzymes and genes involved in its biosynthetic pathway. V C 2013 IUBMB Life, 65(4): [334][335][336][337][338][339][340] 2013

ToF‐SIMS imaging of lipids and lipid related compounds in Drosophila brain

“…The mass resolution of the instrument clearly distinguishes mass m/z 369.14 from m/z 369.35. Instead, this peak is assigned to the red eye pigment, drosopterin (C 15 H 16 O 2 N 10 ), which has been shown to produce the molecular ion at m/z 369.15 in liquid chromatography Fourier transform mass spectrometry analysis of Drosophila . In addition, the salt adducts with sodium at m/z 391.14 and potassium at m/z 407.10 were also observed, which confirms the drosopterin assignment.…”

A fat-derived metabolite regulates a peptidergic feeding circuit in Drosophila

“…Indeed, according to FlyAtlas, the eye is the site of highest pr expression. There, pr , which encodes the enzyme PTP synthase (PTPS), is critical for the synthesis of the drosopterin class of light-screening eye pigments [21]. Using the eye-specific GMR-GAL4 to knock down pr , we found the expression of pr in the eye seems unrelated to feeding regulation (Fig 2E).…”

“…The Pu locus produces at least three transcripts that each show temporal and tissue-specific expression patterns as well as differential regulation by BH4 [27]. The pr locus produces two transcripts [20]—one is eye-specific for pigment production and the other is more broadly expressed (e.g., in the fat body) for BH4 synthesis [21]. Again, our results suggest that PTP produced in the fat body by the successive action of Punch and Purple circulates for conversion to BH4 by Sptr in the NPF neurons.…”

Zinc storage granules in the Malpighian tubules ofDrosophila melanogaster

“…Two types of pigment granules have been identified in wild type animals on the basis of ultrastructure morphology (NOLTE 1961;SHOUP 1966). Many eye color mutants affect enzymes of biosynthetic pathways for the brown ommochromes (WILEY and FORREST 1981) and bright red drosopterins (KIM et al 2013), but a subset, known as transport mutants (SULLIVAN and SULLIVAN 1975), affect the formation of the pigment granules per se. Amongst these transport mutants, we have also analyzed total body zinc accumulation in the adaptin protein complex-3 (ap-3) mutants garnet (g) (OOI et al 1997), carmine (cm) (MULLINS et al 1999), ruby (rb) (KRETZSCHMAR et al 2000) and orange (or) , in lightoid (ltd) and claret (ca) that encode for Rab32 and its Guanine Exchange Factor (MA et al 2004), in pink (p), which encodes for the Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome 5 homologue (FALCON-PEREZ et al 2007;SYRZYCKA et al 2007) and in light (lt), encoding for the VPS41 HOPS complex homologue (WARNER et al 1998).…”